by John Boyne
2015 Beyond the Harbor on the High Seas
Dartmouth Square
I woke to the sound of Pugni’s La Esmerelda rising through the old bones of the house on Dartmouth Square and settling, somewhat muffled, in the top-floor bedroom where I had spent the night before. Looking through the skylight to the blue sky above me, I closed my eyes and tried to recall how it had felt to wake in this same bed, seven decades earlier, a lonely and attention-starved child. The memories, which had always been such a part of my being, had dimmed slightly over the last twelve months. It saddened me that no strong emotions came back to me now. I tried to recall the name of the housekeeper who had worked for Charles and Maude and been something of a friend to me throughout my youth, but everything about her was gone. I searched for the face of Max Woodbead, but it was a blur. And as for why I was even there? That took a moment too, but then it came back to me. A happy day, at last; a day that I thought would never come.
I hadn’t slept well: a combination of anxiety, the temozolomide tablets that I had been taking daily at bedtime for the last five weeks and the sporadic fits of insomnia that they in turn caused. My doctor had told me that they might also result in decreased urination but, quite the contrary, I had gone to the bathroom four times during the night. On the third occasion, I’d continued downstairs in search of a snack only to find my seventeen-year-old grandson, George, lying on the sofa in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, stuffing his face full of crisps while watching a superhero movie on the enormous television that dominated a wall of the living room.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked, opening the fridge and looking inside in the vain hope that there might be a sandwich waiting in there for me.
“It’s only one o’clock,” said George, turning around and dragging the hair out of his eyes as he held the open crisp packet in my direction. I tried a few: awful.
“Is that a beer you’re drinking?” I asked.
“It might be,” he said.
“Should you be drinking that?”
“Probably not. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Not if you get one for me too.”
He grinned and jumped up, and a minute later we were sitting next to each other, watching as grown men in capes leaped from building to building looking manly and utterly furious with the world.
“Do you like this kind of thing?” I asked, confused by the sweeping action that was taking place before me.
“It’s a whole universe,” he said. “You have to watch all the films to understand them.”
“Seems like a lot of work to me.”
“It’s worth it,” he replied, and we continued to watch silently until the credits rolled and he muted the television and turned to me in delight. “Told you,” he said. “Wasn’t it great?”
“No, it was terrible.”
“I’ll give you a box set. If you watch them all, you’ll appreciate them. Trust me.”
I nodded. I’d take it if he gave it to me. And I’d probably watch them, just so I could tell him that I had.
“So,” he said. “Are you excited about tomorrow?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “I’m more nervous than anything else. I just want everything to go well, that’s all.”
“No reason why it shouldn’t. Do you know that this will be the first wedding I’ve ever been to?”
“Really?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. I suppose you’ve been to lots.”
“Actually, no. Not as many as you might think. My own wedding day to your grandmother rather put me off them.”
He sniggered. “I wish I’d been there,” he said, because of course he’d heard the story many times. Alice liked to wheel it out whenever she felt like annoying me. “It sounds like it was hilarious.”
“It really wasn’t,” I said, smiling despite myself.
“Oh come on. You must be able to see the funny side of it now, though, right? It was more than forty years ago.”
“Don’t say that in front of your grandmother,” I warned him. “Or she’ll beat you with a stick.”
“I think even she thinks that it’s funny.”
“I’m not so sure that she does. Even if she pretends to.”
He thought about this and shrugged. “You know I have a new suit?” he said.
“I heard.”
“It’s my first one. I look the business in it.”
I smiled. Of all my grandchildren, George was the one with whom I connected best. I’d never been particularly good with children in general—I’d never really known any—but somehow we seemed to amuse each other and I enjoyed his company. How thin he was, I thought, looking at him now, his long pale legs so skinny as they stretched out before him. And how fat I had grown. When had that happened? The body going to flab. My mother had been hounding me about it for years, encouraging me to go to a gym, but there was something comforting to me about it. I was an elderly man, after all, with the kind of girth one expected from an elderly man. It was strange, though, since I wasn’t much of an eater, wasn’t much of a drinker and yet was still going to seed. Not that it mattered now anyway. What would be the point of losing weight when I had only a few months left to live?
Dragging myself from the bed now, I put my dressing gown on and went downstairs to find Liam, Laura and the three children busying themselves with breakfast.
“How did you sleep?” asked Liam, looking across at me.
“Fine,” I said. “Do you know, I haven’t slept in this house since the night my father was buried.”
“Your adoptive father,” he replied.
“I suppose. When was that anyway? Twenty-one years ago? Doesn’t feel that long.”
Laura came over and put a mug of coffee in my hands. “How’s the speech coming along?” she asked.
“It’s getting there.”
“You haven’t finished it yet?”
“I have. Almost. It was too short at first. And then it was too long. But I think I have it now. I’ll give it another run-through before we leave.”
“Do you want me to have a read of it?” asked Julian, looking up from his book. “I could put in some dirty jokes.”
“Good of you,” I said. “But, no. I’ll wait and surprise you with it.”
“Now, showers,” said Laura, all business. “There’s six of us, so five minutes for everyone or the tank will run cold, OK?”
“I need more time than that to wash my hair,” said Grace, my youngest grandchild, twelve years old and already obsessed with her appearance.
“I’m going first,” said George, charging from the room and up the stairs with a speed that nearly knocked me off my feet.
“I’ll go back to my room,” I said, taking my tea with me. “I’ll have one when George is finished.”
It was difficult at times to believe that this was the same house in which I had grown up. After Alice and Cyril II moved into their own apartment and Liam and Laura took it over, they did so much remodeling that it was like a different place. The ground floor had been gutted entirely so the living area and kitchen blended into one enormous living space. The first floor, which had once belonged to Charles, held the master bedroom and George’s room. The second floor, where Maude’s office had once been and where she had written her nine novels, contained two bedrooms, one each for Julian and Grace, while the study itself was long gone. The top floor was the guest room, my room, and this had remained largely unaltered. It both felt like home and didn’t feel like home. If I looked around, the house was alien to me, but if I closed my eyes and walked up the stairs, inhaling the scent of the place and feeling the presence of the ghosts of the past, then I might have been a child again, longing for Julian to come over and ring the doorbell.
Half an hour later, when I returned downstairs, I was taken aback to see a boy in the hallway, looking at some of the family photographs that decorated the wall. He was standing in the exact spot that had once held the chair where Julian had been sitting when I first laid eyes on him sixty-t
hree years earlier. As he turned to look at me, the way the light was coming through the glass above the door recalled him to me instantly, with his messy blond hair, good looks and clear complexion. It was a deeply unsettling moment, and I had to reach out to the bannister for a moment to prevent myself from falling over.
“Julian?” I said.
“Hello, Cyril.”
“It is you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. Who else would it be?”
“But you’re dead.”
“Yes, I know.”
I shook my head. This wasn’t the first time I had seen him recently. He’d been coming to see me more and more over recent months and always at the most unexpected moments.
“Of course, you’re not really here,” I said.
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
“Because I’m ill. Because I’m dying.”
“You have a few months yet.”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” he said. “You die three nights after Halloween.”
“Oh. Is it painful?”
“No, don’t worry. You go in your sleep.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose. What’s it like anyway, being dead?”
He frowned and thought about it for a few moments. “It’s hard to say,” he said eventually. “I’m getting even more action than I ever did before, so that’s something.”
“It’s not as if you were ever short of it in the past.”
“No, but now that I’m dead I get to have sex with women from all periods of history. I did it with Elizabeth Taylor last week. She looks like she did in Father of the Bride, so, you know, she’s not short of offers. But she chose me.”
“Lucky you.”
“Lucky her,” he said, grinning. “And Rock Hudson made a pass at me.”
“What did you do?”
“Told him I wasn’t into dirty queers.”
I burst out laughing. “Of course you did,” I said.
“No, I’m only kidding. I let him down gently. Although Elizabeth wouldn’t speak to me again afterward.”
“Will there be someone up there for me?” I asked hopefully.
“One person,” he said.
“Where is he?” I asked. “I never see him.”
“He doesn’t visit you?”
“He hasn’t so far.”
“Be patient.”
“Sir?”
I shook my head and looked back at him but he’d changed now, he was no longer Julian but a young boy, a boy of about seventeen. I took another step down so I could see him without the sunlight blinding my vision.
“Yes?” I said.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Who are you?”
“I’m Marcus,” he said.
“Oh yes,” I said, feeling as if I could just sit down on the lowest step and never stand up again. “The famous Marcus.”
“You must be Mr. Avery? George’s grandfather?”
“I’m his grandfather all right. But please don’t call me that. Call me Cyril.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re…you know…”
“An old man?”
“Well, yes. I suppose.”
“I don’t care,” I said, shaking my head. “I hate it when people call me Mr. Avery. If you don’t call me Cyril, I won’t call you Marcus.”
“But what else would you call me?”
“I’ll call you Doris,” I said. “See how you like that.”
“OK, I’ll call you Cyril,” he said, smiling as he extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Why are you standing out here all on your own anyway?” I asked. “Is no one looking after you?”
“George let me in,” he said. “Then he went up to his room because he looked in the mirror and found an eyebrow out of place. And I didn’t want to go in there alone,” he added, nodding toward the kitchen, from where I could hear the sounds of the rest of the family gathered together.
“I wouldn’t worry if I was you,” I said. “They’re very friendly. They don’t bite.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve met them all before. But I just feel nervous going in on my own.”
“Well, I’ll wait with you,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “You look very smart.”
“Thank you,” said Marcus. “I bought a new suit.”
“So did George.”
“I know. We bought them together. We had to be careful that we went for completely different styles and colors. We didn’t want to look like, you know, Jedward or something.”
I smiled. “I actually know who they are,” I said. “Believe it or not. Despite my advanced years.”
“Are you excited about today?” asked Marcus.
“People keep asking me that,” I said.
“It’s a big day.”
“It is, yes. I never expected to see it, if I’m honest.”
“And yet here it is.”
“Indeed,” I said.
We sat in silence for a few moments and then he turned to me enthusiastically. “Is it true that Maude Avery was your mother?” he asked. “Your other mother, I mean?”
“She was,” I said.
“We study two of her books in school. I really like her work.”
“Do you see that room up there?” I said, pointing up through the staircase toward a door on the second floor. “That’s where she wrote them.”
“Not all of them,” said Maude, stepping out of the front room and leaning up against the wall, lighting a cigarette.
“No?”
“No. Before you came to live with us, when it was just me and Charles in the house alone, I used to write downstairs. After he’d gone to work, I mean. The light was better, frankly. And I had more chance of catching people in the gardens.”
“You always hated them,” I said.
“They had no business being there. It’s private property.”
“It’s really not.”
“It is, Cyril. Please don’t contradict me. I find it so tiresome.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Anyway, after you showed up, I moved upstairs. I needed space. And privacy. And as it turned out, I was better off up there. I produced some of my best work in that study.”
“You know you’re on the tea towel?” I said.
“I’ve heard,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “It’s disgusting. The idea of people wiping their dirty coffee cups on my face. How on earth do people think that’s a compliment?”
“It’s immortality,” I said. “Isn’t that what every writer craves? To have their work read long after they’re dead?”
“Well, it’s not as if anyone reads it when they’re alive.”
“Your books have lived on. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“Not in the slightest,” she said. “What does it matter? I should have done a Kafka. Had everything burned after I died.”
“Kafka has a museum in his honor.”
“Yes, but he told me how much he hates it. I’m not sure whether he means it, of course. That man could moan for Czechoslovakia.”
“It’s the Czech Republic now,” I said.
“Oh don’t be difficult, Cyril. It’s such an unattractive trait.”
“I can’t believe you’re friends with Kafka,” I said.
“Friends might be overstating it a little,” she said with a shrug. “Acquaintances would be a better word. You know, Emily Dickinson is here too. All she does is write poems about life all the time. The irony! She keeps asking me to read them. I refuse, of course. The days are long enough as it is.”
“Mr. Avery?”
“What?” I glanced to my left, to Marcus.
“I said, I can’t believe I’m in the same house where Maude Avery wrote her books.”
I nodded and said nothing for a few moments and was glad to see
George bounding down the stairs with the enthusiasm of a puppy.
“How are my eyebrows?” he asked, looking from one of us to the other.
“Perfect,” I said. “But I’ll keep a close eye on them as the day goes on, just in case.”
“Would you? That would be great.”
“Should we go inside?” asked Marcus.
“I thought you were already in there,” said George.
“No,” said Marcus. “I was waiting for you.”
“Granddad,” said George, frowning at me. “You haven’t been perving over Marcus, have you?”
“Shut up, George,” I said. “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“I’m only joking.”
“Well don’t. It’s not funny.”
“I don’t mind. I perv over him all the time. But then I’m allowed.”
I shook my head. “I’m going inside,” I said. “I heard the sound of a champagne cork being popped.”
I led the way into the kitchen, where Liam and Laura were dressed in their finery, glasses before them, while Julian continued with his book and Grace listened to her iPod.
“Hi, Marcus,” said Laura.
“Hello, Mrs. Woodbead,” he replied politely, and I noticed that neither she nor Liam invited him to call them by their first names. My son made some remark about a football match that had taken place the night before and within a minute the two were engaged in a lively conversation about it. From what I understood, the team that Liam supported had beaten the team that Marcus supported and the young lad was raging about it.
“You look very smart, Cyril,” said Laura, reaching over and giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you,” I said. “As do you. If I was forty years younger, of a different sexual orientation and my son wasn’t married to you, I’d be after you in a heartbeat.”
“I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” she said, pouring me a glass.
“Isn’t this just fucking great?” said George, raising his voice now, and we all turned to see him beaming in delight as he held his glass aloft.
“Watch the language,” said Liam.
“I’m just saying,” said George. “To find love when you’re…you know…so ancient. It’s fantastic. And then to be able to stand up before the world and declare it out loud. It’s fucking brilliant.”